The stronger I become, the more afraid I get. For all I've got, for all I've gotten, for all I get...

What if it's just not good enough? What if stolen power doesn't pay off?

It would be kind of poetic, after all. I'm not the chosen one, branded by destiny. I wasn't anointed by any angels, not woven into some great goddamned tapestry. I didn't have the luck or bloodline for that kind of rich noble's adventure. I grew up poor. I grew up hungry. Ugly. Cruel.

But I grew up clever. I grew up bitter. I read a lot of very bad books.

I asked for this fate. No, I didn't ask. I just took it. Why? Because I don't look like my heroes. Yes, I stole the mark off of the skin of a better boy. Why? Because he didn't know what it's worth to a shame-skinned beggar whoreson. Sure, he'd lose his pretty things. His family. His comfort. His peace. He'd invest his tears into some grand purpose and come out all the stronger.

No. Not like that. I stole his tragedies. Why? Because no one called me a martyr when it hit me.

And it did. And now I am. And tomorrow, it all ends. This mark burns against my skin; it knows.

No one ever asks to be the center of a meaningful story. Those who do, don't know better.

They don't know how much it hurts to travel through the sea of hard-eyed faces that represent real conflict. Settings are arenas. New people are the honored dead, or even worse, they're lions. Try it sometime. Find out what's happening just past polite. Find out who needs you. Listen.

Give it a week. You'll realize how wrong you were.

Give it a month. You'll change, whether you let yourself or not.

Give it a few more character establishing arcs. You won't even recognize what you once knew.

Then compare the pain to your progress. If you're even close to happy? Your life's a genre story.

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Our feelings are the same way. They're a kind of heat.

How do I know? Of course I know.

How do I fly? Because I know. Why do I fly? How could I not?

Why do I get up just to get beat down again? Why do I show up, half the time for fans that don't quite understand me? Why do I show up, half the time for critics who think I just want fame? Why do I wake up every morning - aching, bruised, beaten down, and with blood in my teeth? Why do I go to bed an hour or two before that, knowing that I won't ever get enough? Why do I fly?

Because energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Our feelings are the same way.

The steam parts like my own, personal cloudburst. I spread my arms like jet wings as I break past the gloom. The glow that beams down on my face might as well be sunlight. To me, it's better.

I range and run and leap and lever myself over fallen communications hubs. I mount dragons of concrete and abandoned armor, thirty feet high. I have a hangar of forgotten treasure ships. I have a whole wide world of dark corners and secrets to explore. I'm not afraid. How could I be?

I'm home. I'm here. So I just breathe deep whatever chemicals I get and hope they're beneficial.

There's no heaven in the skies above for a man like me. Instead, there's Aria. There's only Aria.

She dredged me up from the cold, dark waters. Her fingers came as thirsty roots, seeking out bad men's blood in the deep black. Well, when she found me, adrift and under? She found it.

The sigh that trembled up her body sucked right through me like the pressure of a deep-dipped straw. Her pleasure teased the edges of my unsleeping consciousness - not in a sensual way, but in a clean sort of satisfaction. To Aria, I was sweet, chilled juice. I was something nourishing.

When she drank up a taste of my sins, her dark skin of green algae freckles started to glow.

She hauled me up and into a certain kind of paradise. I wasn't alone, and yet I really was. She set me up, at attention, on my feet, both beside her and inside of her. She hung there, hanging me from luminescent threads, under a shade of veiny moss, like witch's hair. Her roots dug deeper into me -draining out the bloat, the lingering trace of blood, and drop by drop? The memories.

I remembered dying, and then I didn't. It didn't matter. I remembered a Gloria? No, only Aria.

I reached out with hollowed hands. She let me hold her for a little while. Maybe a year. Maybe a decade. Maybe a moment, but moment's aren't a real measure of time. Not in a sensual way, but a clean kind of comfort. Her belly hummed a lullaby as her rough fingers stroked my soaked hair dry. Her eyes glimmered like coins in a pool. My arms began to blossom. Leaves and soft lilac.

Her kiss left my tongue as raw as sandpaper. It tore, but nothing bled. I gasped. She sighed.

She sucked out something important and slipped free of me. Not in a sensual way. Clean. Kind.

I'm never alone, but I am alone. I am alone, but I am grateful. I don't remember what I did wrong.

Three words have never started, stopped, or twisted so much. Those three words ended me.

The feeling started in my fingertips. Copper-soaked but careful, I seized and scraped against an almost human clavicle. My focus narrowed down like a masked lamp, until all that I could see was that glimmer of that blood against nail's edges. I could taste it. Then? It crept inside me.

That voice was weak. Trembling. Unsure. Interrogative. It wasn't mine. It couldn't be my voice.

"I do," he whispered. Eyes as red and dark as dried bloodstains looked up at me. Certain. Sure.

Around us lay two dozen bodies, two dozen of my former countrymen. They lay in bits and broken halves, like a butcher's bloody practice, laid across their prince like dry wood for his pyre. With him, my hope would have burned. He'd killed them all. So many before. So many to come.

"I love you," whispered the monster man, the hell soldier, the iron door to Hell. I felt his heartbeat underneath my palms, an inhuman cantering rhythm that tried and failed to match my own racing heart. His heart was covered by hard, scarred flesh, sewn close by a lacing of my hair.

First, please allow me to apologize for this most unusual format. Letters. Structure. Steps and stages, all of it's so old-fashioned. But so is undying love. Uncompromising good. So is easy joy.

So call me old-fashioned.

I would like to request a refund on the software that I've so recently purchased. All of the stories I can access on your system display in gray tones. I can't feel context on my fingertips. The only scent I breathe in is so much burning ozone. There's sound, sure enough, but there's no music.

I can make my own music. Please, be quiet. Just let me listen.

I would like to file a complaint regarding your customer service. I am not a customer. I do not want to be serviced. I want an old friends at the coffee shop. I want to be the new girl at the bookstore. Your online chat was helpful, though, after I ran them out of scripts.

Please stop coaching them. People can be lovely or hideous. They don't need to suppress that.

I would like to speak to your CEO. Your president. Your board of directions. Their administrative assistants and the fitness instructors that come by every Tuesday and/or Thursday. (Sandwiches are Wednesdays - too much mayo. Counter-productive.) Not to yell; I just want to meet them.

I want to know they're really there. Are you sure? When was the last time you checked?

So, in conclusion, I would like to thank you for your software. For your hardware. For your gray stories and your popular personalities. I think that what you've made is lovely, in its way. Clearly, a lot of work went into it. Someone loves it. I've tried. But thank you, anyway. I honor the effort.

The only words that come to me, come in poetry. Yet here I am, covered in snot and tears and a shaking sack of broken lines, and I'm supposed to find this beautiful? Is this what I'm here for?

I mean, I know all the right words, or at least a few good ones. Her hair - I could just say something about her hair, about the way it used to shine in the light. Used to. No, no. Not her hair. Her eyes, then? Gods, I can't remember the color of her eyes. Her eye-shadow used to glitter, turquoise and gold sometimes. Kohl used to smoke and streak like some other culture's stolen mysteries, like something cursed. Now? The only colors I can see are red cracks and muddy, murky stains. So no. No, not her eyes. Let's just forget about her face entirely. Okay.

Okay. I can lie, I guess. I could be empathetic. I could try to understand her situation, but fuck, I'm barely surviving my own. Who came up with this scenario? You cry, I hold you. I cry, you hold me. Is that all we are? Just.. pillars on a weak foundation, holding one another up? Is the ground that bad? Is the floor that horrible? Can I even care about somebody else so very goddamned broken? Can I?

Should I? Or is this about me? Oh, yes. Of course. It's always about me. I mean, I know all the right words, or at least a few good ones. At one time or another, I've even meant them.